Category Archives: hall of fame

Wrestlemania 33 is in Orlando this year, a very familiar area to WWE. This year’s show will feature some of the best wrestlers in the world and they even got a legend like Goldberg to come back.

A lot happens the weekend of Wrestlemania. Many indie promotions run shows in the area since there are tens of thousands of fans in that area, so why not? WWE also runs an Axxess fan festival, NXT Takeover show and the WWE Hall of Fame.

A few people have already been announced to be in this year’s Hall of Fame class (Kurt Angle, Rock N Roll Express & Teddy Long) and a few are strongly rumored like Rick Rude, Diamond Dallas Page and William Regal, so I will not include them on this list.

TNA superstar and former gold medal Olympic wrestler Kurt Angle was arrested for DWI in Texas last night. This is his fourth alcohol-related arrest in six years.

He went to Twitter this morning and vowed to seek the help he needs and to enter rehab. He added, “I can beat this” and we hope he does as well.

The timing of Angle’s arrest couldn’t come at a worse time professionally. He is set to be the second inductee into the ‘TNA Hall of Fame’ in October and is currently in the middle of a major storyline on Impact Wrestling television program. He has a large role in a stable called the ‘Main Event Mafia’ which is feuding with another stable, ‘Aces & Eights’. It is unknown at this time if he will be going into an inpatient or outpatient rehab program.

We breakdown some of the events in Angle’s life that started his downward spiral. Continue reading →

Anyone can have a nickname, it’s easy. If you’re name is William or Robert, you can go by Billy or Bobby. You can even have a nickname that goes with your name. An example of that would be “Quick Nick” or “Slow Joe”. See how easy it is?

Well, people have gotten very lazy with nicknames in my generation. Alex Rodriguez is “A-Rod” and Derek Jeter is often referred to as “Jeets.” You see how lame we’ve become?

We scoured the list of players who have ever played in the Majors and we picked the best of all-time.

The 2013 WWE Hall of Fame class has been announced, well the headliners at least. Mick Foley, Bob Backlund, Trish Stratus, and most importantly, Bruno Sammartino are set to be inducted in Madison Square Garden before Wrestlemania 29.

Sammartino is the biggest name in the upcoming class. He has been dead-set against being inducted, but finally accepted the induction. He believes the current state of professional wrestling feeds the bottom denominator. He has been vocal about the vulgarity in “sports entertainment” and vowed to never accepted an induction invitation. I don’t know what changed, but I’m glad he will finally be in.

Here is a list of ten wrestlers, or wrestling factions, that need to be in the WWE Hall of Fame and the likelihood of their inductions happening in the next five years. Continue reading →

Are you tired of baseball books with the same boring stock photos? You will not get that with Baseball Fantography by Andy Strasberg. This is a collection of photographs from fans that capture the intimate and personal lives of your favorite baseball players from the past and present. Strasberg began this project when he found an old picture of him with Roger Maris at Yankee Stadium in 1966. He hadn’t seen the photo in decades and a nostalgic feeling came over him. He knew that there were other people who had old baseball photos that would have a similar feeling. This is a timeless record of the fans’ baseball experience…by the fans, for the fans. Continue reading →

Blyleven deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, if not only because of that awesome shirt, but he was a very good pitcher. Let’s face it, baseball’s Hall of Fame has turned into “the hall of very good,” and Blyleven deserves in. He fell 5 votes shy today for being an inductee, but he is a sure money bet of making it next year. Andre Dawson is the lone candidate and the entire ceremony will be dedicated to the former great of the Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs. In the following article, I try to make my case for Bert Blyleven to be inducted in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Blyleven played during a time, when multi-channel ESPNs and regional Fox Sports Net channels did not exist and MLB Extra Innings packages on DirecTV wasn’t even invented, you may not have caught Bert Blyleven’s best work. Unless you caught the highlights on Sportscenter where Chris Berman used a nickname of Burt “Be Home” Blyleven, you would just think that he was an average pitcher. His career ERA was 3.90, but his early career was his peak, but he kept a roster spot on small-market teams. His record was 287-250, just 37 games over .500, but from 1982 until the end of his career in ’92, his ERA was over 4.00. If a pitcher wins nearly 300 games, it nearly negates this feat once a pitcher reaches his 250th loss, like Blyleven.

An argument that Blyleven has for his induction is that his numbers are measurable to Nolan Ryan’s. Blyleven does not have Ryan’s no-hitters or his dominance of one-hit games either. Blyleven’s win-loss record has a lot to do with Blyleven’s teams not scoring many runs, thus having him lose many one-run games. He pitched in a different era than what today’s pitchers will be held up to. Middle-relief pitching was approached as need-based, rather than a necessity, Blyleven pitched in almost 300 career complete games.

Let’s crunch some numbers, in his 22-year career, Blyleven pitched a complete game in over 40% of the games in which he has started. He has never ranked higher than third in the Cy Young voting and has only played in two All-Star games in his 22-year career.

Bert Blyleven will be immortalized into the Hall of Fame. Sometimes players start racking up statistics just cause longevity and not exactly superb play. Blyleven’s 3701 strikeouts are amazing, but his K/9 statistic of 7.4 per 9 innings isn’t super spectacular, but nothing about Blyleven really is. It’s a solid number and Blyleven was a solid pitcher and long-term performance needs to be rewarded with an induction in Cooperstown.

The verdict is in and Andre Dawson will be the lone inductee into baseball’s Hall of Fame. It was his 9th year on the ballot and the publicity campaign worked for “The Hawk.” Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were close, but weren’t able to get 75% of the votes to join Dawson.

I have been a huge fan of Andre Dawson since I was about seven years of age. When he appeared on the Cubs, I was unaware where he came from. I was very young and I only kept tabs on the Cubs since I watched them every day on WGN. It wasn’t until later that I found out that he was a star in Montreal for many years. When he arrived in Chicago, he was a home run machine and the clean-up hitter that Chicago needed to finally win a pennant in 1989. He was a nice player to lineup near Ryne Sandberg, but he turned out to be much more for Chicago, since he won the NL MVP in 1987 and lead the league in home runs.

Dawson was clearly a shell of himself later in his career because he played on the very bad turf in Montreal that messed up his knees. He used to have a lot of speed and stole a lot of bases with teammate Tim Raines leading the league many seasons. The Expos were a very fast team, but after playing so many years there, players were plagued with various knee problems. The turf was basically carpet on top of cement.

I will surely be watching the induction of “The Hawk” as I did when Ryne Sandberg was inducted. When you think about the 1987 season for the Cubs, they had Dawson, Sandberg, Rafael Palmeiro, Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer, and Lee Smith. They had six players that will either be in the Hall of Fame or will be very close. It’s hard to believe that the team finished last place in the NL East that year with a record of 76-85.

It was a shame that Bert Blyleven fell 5 votes of getting into the Hall of Fame. Every pitcher who gets near 300 wins, even if he had nearly as many losses, deserves to get in. He has two more years of eligibility and he should get in next season. Roberto Alomar also fell short in his first year of eligibility. He is another player that should get in and they both faired well in a year with not many stars becoming eligible. Jack Morris also saw an increase in votes, but he still has a long way to go, his name was on about 50% of the ballots.

Harper Collins has published a great coffee table book entitled “Baseball Americana.” It’s by Harry Katz, Frank Ceresi, Phil Michel, Wilson McBee, and Susan Reyburn, it’s a lot of people’s names, but it’s a big book. There are so many great pictures and information in this book from the Library of Congress. There’s even a panoramic picture of the first Black World Series in 1924. Here is my review of “Baseball Americana”…

I’m a huge baseball fan and when I can read a book about the historical past of baseball, I jump at the opportunity. Some of the things in “Baseball Americana” are things that aren’t shown in any other book. Some of the material that this books includes are a picture baseball being played in 1787, the first ever baseball card, a rare color photograph of Satchel Paige, and even a lithograph of the first ever professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869. Continue reading →